 Boudica, almost defeated the Roman army |
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barddas  |
Posted: 30-Jun-2003, 03:09 PM
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Offical sacrifice to the guitar gods-Play til you bleed
Group: Celtic Nation
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Now i read in Archeology mag. that the BBC/Hollywood are supposed to be doing a film based on her life( and legend, not too much of her everyday life is know-). I will try to find the article in Arch. mag. it was really interesting... But for now....
Boudica
(died 62 AD)
Boudica (or Boadicea) was the wife of Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, a British tribe, at a time when Britain was a Roman province. When Prasutagus died he willed half of his kingdom to the Roman empire and half to Boudica and their two daughters, Camorra and Tasca1 or, according to legend, Voada and Voadicia2. British law allowed royal inheritance to be passed to daughters in the absence of male heir, but Roman law did not. The Roman administrator ignored the will and proceded to take over the entire kingdom. Roman historian Tacitus wrote, "Kingdom and household alike were plundered like prizes of war... for a start, his widow Boudica was flogged and their daughters raped. The chieftains of the Iceni were deprived of their family estates as if the whole country had been handed over to the Romans. The king's own relatives were treated as slaves."
Enraged Boudica joined Iceni forces with another tribe, the Trinobantes, and together they fought back. They attacked and conquered the Roman colony Camulodunum (now Colchester) and burned the temple dedicated to Claudius, the Roman emperor who completed the conquest of Britain. The Romans retaliated against the insurgents by sending a whole division of soldiers, but they were defeated. The insurgents then marched on London, which they sacked, and killed its Roman population, as well as their sympathizers. They did the same at Verulamium (now St. Albans) and other settlements.
Finally, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, the Roman governor of Britain, gathered all the Roman troops in the south of Britain and attacked the British in a narrow valley so that the superior numbers of rebel force would be of no advantage against the smaller Roman army. Tacitus reported that Boudica was seen riding her chariot and inspiring her troops before the battle.
However, this time the Romans were victorious, and slaughtered the rebel troops. Boudica and her daughters escaped but then poisoned themselves rather than allow capture. Roman retribution for rebellion was swift and cruel but the British kept up the fight for another year, when Suetonius was succeeded by Publius Petronius Turpilianus, who changed the policy toward the native population to one of appeasement, which remained in use for three hundred more years of Roman occupation of Britain.
Contributed by Danuta Bois, 1997.
Bibliography:
1. Heroines: Remarkable and Inspiring Women/An Illustrated Anthology of Essays by Women Writers, Crescent Books, 1995. Boudica profile writtten by Andrea Hopkins.
2. Women Who Ruled: A Biographical Encyclopedia by Guida M. Jackson, Barnes & Noble Books, 1998
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This post has been edited by barddas on 30-Jun-2003, 03:10 PM
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BARDDAS BLOG/WEB SITECo Founder/Member of the KDCMusic is holy, art is sacred, and creativity is powerEveryday is EARTH DAY to a farmer "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." Oscar Wilde Some men are drawn to oceans, they cannot breathe unless the air is scented with a salty mist. Others are drawn to land that is flat, and the air is sullen and is leaden as August. My people were drawn to mountains- Earl Hamner Jr.
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| barddas |
Posted: 04-Aug-2003, 01:48 PM
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Offical sacrifice to the guitar gods-Play til you bleed
Group: Celtic Nation
Posts: 2,030
Joined: 06-Nov-2002
Zodiac: Willow
Realm: second star to the right, straight until morning
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Here is a piece of the article I spoke of some time ago....
CITY OF VICTORY
Burned to the ground by the Celtic warrior-queen Boudica, Camulodunum might have remained Britain's capital city had the Romans rebuilt it in the right place.
BY KRISTIN M. ROMEY
ny real estate agent will tell you that location is everything. So will archaeologist Philip Crummy, who has been digging in and around the under-celebrated town of Colchester in southeastern England for the past 30 years. On paper, the town is a tourism board's dream, from its beginnings in the first century B.C. as Camulodunum, a formidable fortress dedicated to the Celtic god of war and ruled by a native king celebrated by Shakespeare, to its designation as "Britain's first recorded town" after the Romans established a colony on the site in A.D. 50. In what Winston Churchill called "probably the most horrible episode which our Island has known," Colchester was burned to the ground during a native uprising led by the famous Celtic queen Boudica and rebuilt by the Romans, who incorporated their destroyed buildings into the defensive wall that encircles the town to this day.
It was the Romans who sealed Colchester's fate when they established their colony in a location that was perfectly adequate for local native farmers, but not for colonists who expected wine from Spain and figs from Italy. And it was the demand for such products that led to the meteoric rise of Roman Londinium at the expense of Colchester, which to this day remains a small town with a big reputation in British history. In City of Victory, his book on the archaeology and history of the town that has been his focus for the past three decades, Crummy sums up Colchester's sweeping history with a final sentence: "A few miles closer to the mouth of the Colne would have made a lot of difference."
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